You can schedule resources to work on tasks and issues for an individual team you are a member of, for an individual project where you are a member of the project team, or for multiple projects for which you are the resource manager.

The following sections describe how to enable and manage user allocations in Workfront:

When assigning new work to users on the scheduling timeline, you can determine how the Planned Hours for a task or issue are allocated to users. For more information about Planned Hours, see "Understanding Planned Hours."

Planned Hours can be divided in the following ways:

Among users who are assigned to the task or issue

Across the duration of the task or issueFor example, a sales-related task might require more work toward the end of the task duration. You can plan this uneven distribution of hours into your task.

When scheduling resources for multiple projects from the Scheduling tab, not all users and work items are displayed on the scheduling timeline. For information about what information is displayed on the scheduling timeline, see "Prerequisites" in the article "Getting Started with Resource Scheduling."

Understanding Allocations Set on the Edit Task or Issue Box vs. on the Scheduling Timeline

You can modify the user allocations for a task or issue from the following locations within Workfront:

The Scheduling timelineThe scheduling timeline is located in the following areas:

The Scheduling tab (when you are scheduling resources for multiple projects)

The Staffing tab (when you are scheduling resources for a single project)

The Working On tab (when you are scheduling resources for a team).

When you modify user allocations from the scheduling timeline (as described in "Modifying User Allocations" in this section), you can define allocations for each user on the task or issue, as well as for each day within the task or issue duration.

The Edit Task or Edit Issue dialog box. When you modify user allocations from a Edit Task or Issue dialog box (as described in "Managing User Allocation Percentages on Work"), you can define allocations for the task or issue only as a whole for each user. If you want to manage those allocations on a per-day basis, you must modify the allocations in the scheduling timeline, as described in "Modifying User Allocations" in this article.IMPORTANT When modifying user allocations from an Edit Task or Issue dialog box, allocations you previously configured in the scheduling timeline are overwritten. In addition, any change you make to allocations in the scheduling timeline are not reflected on an Edit Task or Issue dialog box.

Managing user allocations from the scheduling timeline rather than from the Edit Task or Issue box provides the following advantages:

You can allocate more time for one user over another user.Allocation indicators provide a visual representation of how allocated a user is compared to other users, as described in "Understanding Allocation Indicators."

You can allocate more time for work on one day over another day.Allocation indicators provide a visual representation of how allocated users are on a given day, as described in "Understanding Allocation Indicators."

You can perform all resourcing responsibilities in one place, on the scheduling timeline.

Understanding Allocation Indicators

Various visual indicators are available to provide quick information regarding the level of which a user is allocated to work on a given day.

Your system administrator determines how Workfront calculates user availability at the system level (considering hours as well as FTE availability). Depending on this system-wide setting, user availability is calculated either using the default schedule or the user's schedule. For more information, see "Calculating Hours and FTE for Users for Resource Scheduling."

Allocation ShadingAllocation is visually displayed on tasks assigned to users in the form of shading. Darker shading indicates the allocated hours as a percentage of the assigned users' FTE (Full Time Equivalent) on a given day. (For more information about how to configure FTE in Workfront, see "Understanding Hours and FTE for Users for Resource Scheduling.") For example, a single user is assigned to a task that has an amount of 4 Planned Hours and a Duration of 1 day. The FTE for the user is defined in the system as 1 (meaning that the user is scheduled to work at full-time status, or rather 40 hours a week, or 8 hours a day). The shading for the task on a given day occupies half of the vertical space of the task, this indicates that the user is allocated half of his or her FTE (4 hours) on that day. The task or issue displays the cumulative allocation across all users assigned to the work item. You can expand a work item to view more details, including who is assigned to the work item and how many hours each user is assigned.Shading is not displayed on tasks in the Unassigned area on the scheduling timeline.

Daily Totals for Each Day for Each User: You can display the total Planned Hours allocated to a given user on each day. This information is displayed at the top of each user's row on the scheduling timeline. This information is not displayed by default. You can enable this as described in "Enabling User Allocations."Tasks from projects with any of the following statuses are included when determining daily totals: Current, Planning, or Approved.

Overallocation IndicatorsWhen the total number of Planned Hours assigned to a user on a given day exceeds the number of hours the user works in a day (across all tasks), that user is considered overallocated on that day. When a user is overallocated, a red bar is displayed, outlining each task on the day. Tasks from projects with any of the following statuses are included when determining a user's overallocation: Current, Planning, or Approved.The number of hours a user works in a day is defined via the FTE field in the each user's profile, as described in see "Understanding Hours and FTE for Users for Resource Scheduling."When you enable the Show Totals for Daily Planned Hours and the Show Resource Allocation Highlighting options in your settings, the daily total number of Planned Hours displays in red when the user is overallocated. Hours are displayed to the nearest tenth by default (for example, 1.3).

Understanding the Default Allocation for Planned Hours

Workfront attempts to distribute Planned Hours among the assigned users and days as follows:

When multiple users are assigned to a task or issue, hours are divided evenly among the users.The distribution reflects any advanced assignments that have already been made on the task. For more information about advanced assignments, see "Creating Advanced Assignments."

When the Duration of the task or issue spans multiple days, the Planned Hours are distributed equally among the days, and among all users assigned to the task, based on the user's schedule.

When the Planned Hours of a task span multiple days, a user viewing the task from a different time zone might see a difference in the task duration or the Planned Start Date or Planned Completion Date.

Hours are displayed to the nearest hundredth by default (for example, 1.33). You can scroll to the right to see more.

Understanding Who Can View and Modify Allocations

The following types of users can view or modify user allocations in Workfront:

Resource Managers: You can view and modify user allocations for tasks and issues on any projects for which you are the Resource Manager. You can do this either in the Scheduling timeline in the People area, or in the Staffing tab of a project. For information about how Resource Managers can make changes to tasks and issues across projects, see "Managing User Assignments."

Plan and Work Users: You can view allocations for any tasks and issues you are assigned to by using either the new My Work Calendar or the Working On calendar on a team that you are a member of. In addition to viewing allocations, you can modify your allocations if you have Contribute access to the tasks and issues.For more information about how to use the calendar in the My Work area, see "Viewing Assigned Work on the My Work Calendar."

Time Zone Considerations on the Scheduling Timeline

In rare cases, users viewing the scheduling timeline might see inconsistencies where the Planned Hours of a task do not equal the total allocated hours of individual days. This can occur when the operating system time zone setting of one user is such that the Planned Start Date or Planned Completion Date differs from another user.

For example, if the Planned Completion Date of a task is set to 11:00am on 11/3/18, MST, a user in Australia who views the task would see the Planned Completion Date as 1:00am on 11/4/18, the following day. If the user in Australia allocates hours on 11/4/18, these allocated hours are not visible to the user on MST. However, these hours are always taken into consideration on the Planned Hours of the project.

Enabling User Allocations

User allocation functionality is disabled by default on the scheduling timeline. Before you can use the user allocation functionality described in this section, you must first enable it.

NOTE User allocations can be enabled only when the scheduling timeline is configured to use Planned Dates. If the scheduling timeline is configured to use Projected Dates, user allocations cannot be displayed. For more information about configuring the scheduling timeline to use Planned or Projected Dates, see "Configuring Projected Dates to Display on the Scheduling Timeline" in "Getting Started with Resource Scheduling."

To enable user allocations on the scheduling timeline:

Navigate to the scheduling timeline for multiple projects, for an individual project, or for a team:

For multiple projects: Click People in the Global Navigation Bar, then click the Scheduling tab.

For an individual project: Navigate to the project where you want to enable user allocations, then click the Staffing tab (the Staffing tab might be located under the More menu), then ensure that the Team Scheduling tab is selected.

For a team: Click People in the Global Navigation Bar, click the Teams tab, select the team from the drop-down menu, then click the Working On sub-tab

Enable one or both of the following options to show user allocations on the scheduling timeline:Show Resource Allocation Highlighting: Display user allocation shading on tasks and issues on the scheduling timeline.This option is disabled by default.Show Totals for Daily Planned Hours: Displays the total number of Planned Hours that are allocated to each user for each day on the scheduling timeline. The Planned Hours display to the nearest tenth (for example, 1.3). This option is disabled by default.

(Optional) In the Include Issues section, select whether you want issues to be displayed on the scheduling timeline.This option is disabled by default.

Click Return to Scheduling.User allocations are now displayed on the scheduling timeline.

To modify user allocations for a task or issue from the scheduling timeline:

Navigate to the scheduling timeline for multiple projects, for an individual project, or for a team:

For multiple projects: Click People in the Global Navigation Bar, then click the Scheduling tab.

For an individual project: Navigate to the project where you want to modify user allocations, then click the Staffing tab (the Staffing tab might be located under the More menu), then ensure that the Team Scheduling tab is selected.

For a team: Click People in the Global Navigation Bar, click the Teams tab, select the team from the drop-down menu, then click the Working On sub-tab

Expand the task where you want to manage user allocations.By default, Planned Hours are divided evenly among the assigned users and days of the task Duration. Hours are not added on weekends (Saturdays and Sundays). For more information, see the "Understanding the Default Allocation for Planned Hours" section.

Click the field for the user whose hours you want to adjust on a given day.NOTE To maintain the original distribution after modifying hours, click Cancel.

Specify the adjusted number of hours.

Click Save.You can save your changes only when the total number of hours for the task is equal to the number of original Planned Hours. This number is shown in the Planned Hours field on the task. The number is displayed as red when the total is not equal to the total number of Planned Hours.

Understanding Criteria that Reset User Allocations

Workfront resets the user allocations that you manually edit in the scheduling timeline when a number of actions occur on the tasks or the project. Generally, Workfront resets user allocations any time the timeline of the project is recalculated. For more information about recalculating the timeline of projects, see "Recalculating Timelines for Projects."

Some of the most common criteria that could reset user allocations in the scheduling timeline are:

Changing the dates of a predecessor task if the Task Constraint is a flexible constraint. For example, As Soon as Possible or As Late as Possible.For information about Task Constraint, see "Task Constraint Overview."

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